La agotadora huida de Elías al desierto tras su enfrentamiento con Jezabel y su legión de profetas de Baal debería ganarse un poco de nuestra simpatía.
La extravagancia de su victoria sobre los siervos de Baal en una contienda de alto riesgo en la cima de una montaña no ha borrado la singularidad de la experiencia de Elías. Ha ganado la batalla, pero lo ha hecho solo. El triunfo no ha logrado superar la soledad. Cuando YHVH se dirige a su profeta en su refugio de la montaña —este extraño YHVH que de repente no se encuentra en el terremoto ni en el fuego, sino solo en una suave brisa que saca a Elías de su desánimo—, él solo puede hablar de lo que ha hecho por su divino patrón.
Y él respondió: He tenido mucho celo por el Señor, Dios de los ejércitos; porque los hijos de Israel han abandonado tu pacto, han derribado tus altares y han matado a espada a tus profetas. He quedado yo solo y buscan mi vida para quitármela. (1 Reyes 19:10 LBLA)
La soledad se ha convertido en neurosis. La neurosis ha nublado la visión de Elías y se ha convertido en una obsesión que se cumple a sí misma.
Nuestra simpatía por este hombre debe persistir.
YHVH no ha dado a conocer su consejo a su profeta, al menos no tan plenamente como Elías podría sentir que tiene derecho a compartirlo. En la angustiada réplica de Elías hay un toque de decepción hacia el propio YHVH. Elías se siente utilizado, desprotegido y vulnerable.
YHVH, con suavidad pero con firmeza, envía a su hombre de vuelta a la civilización, pero no sin antes atravesar la espesa nube de agotamiento neurótico. No es cierto que Elías se haya convertido en el portavoz definitivo de su Señor. Esa no es la mejor percepción de Elías. Es la voz del agotamiento total. YHVH contrarresta su sutil mentira.
Pero dejaré siete mil en Israel, todas las rodillas que no se han doblado ante Baal y toda boca que no lo ha besado. (1 Reyes 19:18 LBLA)
La batalla por el alma de Israel continúa. Elías, sin importar lo que su papel le haya robado por el momento, debe estar allí.
Siete mil israelitas no han estado en la montaña de la contienda con Elías, sino que han vivido sus vidas normales lejos del fuego y los terremotos, con una suave brisa a sus espaldas. Elías debe unirse a ellos.
Si la audacia impulsa el lado humano de la construcción del templo, una especie de ficción da forma a la respuesta divina. Los textos bíblicos sobre la construcción del templo lo saben y trabajan con maestría con los múltiples puntos de vista que deben sostenerse si se quiere que construir una casa para Dios sea algo más que un sinsentido piadoso.
Salomón y YHVH entienden que el templo es una concesión. «El Dios del cielo y de la tierra», como YHVH parece haberse dado a conocer tanto a Israel como a sus vecinos en sus momentos de disposición, no puede vivir en realidad en un santuario levantino de piedra tallada y adornado con cedro. Sin embargo, la realidad de que Dios esté presente con su pueblo en esa modesta construcción no es menos genuina por este impase entre la trascendencia y la concreción.
Él no está realmente allí. Sin embargo, está realmente allí.
El texto trata esta paradoja haciendo del templo de Salomón un lugar hacia el que y en el que el pueblo ora a YHVH. En respuesta, este Dios lleno de gracia y atento vuelve sus ojos y oídos hacia el templo y escucha la oración del pueblo. Una especie de estación de retransmisión espiritual, el templo —a juicio de Salomón y del texto— conecta eficazmente a un pueblo que ora con un Dios que escucha y que ha prometido estar presente con ellos de manera palpable. De hecho, el deseo de Salomón es que otras naciones también puedan orar en su santuario y hacia él, para que ellas también puedan experimentar y luego narrar la incomparable atención del dios de Israel.
En un intercambio tan complejo de promesas y reivindicaciones humanas, YHVH se permite un peligroso antropomorfismo. Sus ojos y su corazón estarán en este templo.
¿Cómo se puede entender que los sentidos divinos se centren en un edificio erigido por manos humanas? El eje sobre el que gira esta compleja conversación es, sin duda, el papel del templo como microcosmos del cielo. En este espacio amurallado y, en particular, en el culto que se ofrece allí, el Señor estará presente como lo está naturalmente en el cielo. El culto, en la estructura profunda del pensamiento israelita, es un vínculo entre el cielo y la tierra, una especie de escalera de Jacob perpetua. Más que eso, es la inversión de la separación entre el Creador y la creación, el Redentor y los redimidos, el que vive en la espesa oscuridad y los que ven mejor con la luz, que ha sido la experiencia humana desde el inicio de la historia. O, como nos invita a entender la Historia Primitiva, desde la expulsión de Adán del Edén, otra encarnación más del cielo donde Dios pasea al atardecer.
Es posible que el lector encuentre esta imagen de la interacción entre lo divino y lo humano engañosa, falaz, incluso contraproducente cuando se contrapone a la urgencia de actuar aquí y ahora para lograr todo tipo de mejoras. Sin embargo, sería un error descartarla por primitiva. Rara vez la psicología moderna y sus ciencias hermanas más corporativas alcanzan este nivel de sofisticación.
Y, sin embargo, lo único que Salomón realmente quería —Israel aprendería a desearlo aún más— era un Dios que escuchara y viera.
Cuando se resolvió la sucesión desordenada que entronizó a Salomón como el primer monarca del antiguo Israel en recibir su corona por herencia, se consolidó el poder del rey y se vengaron las antiguas ofensas, el primer «hijo de David» se ocupó de un asunto que su padre había dejado pendiente. Construyó una casa para YHVH.
Salomón no subestima su logro:
Entonces Salomón dijo: El Señor ha dicho que Él moraría en la densa nube. Ciertamente yo te he edificado una casa majestuosa, un lugar para tu morada para siempre. (1 Reyes 8:12-13 LBLA).
Sin embargo, hay algo decididamente arbitrario en el intento de encerrar a YHVH en un espacio habitable. Incluso el arquitecto real reconoce la vanidad esencial de su esfuerzo.
Pero, ¿morará verdaderamente Dios sobre la tierra? He aquí, los cielos y los cielos de los cielos no te pueden contener, cuánto menos esta casa que yo he edificado. (1 Reyes 8:27 LBLA)
De hecho, los sacerdotes que intentan cumplir con sus deberes se ven incapacitados por la nube de gloria de YHVH, que llena el templo con una fuerza abrumadora justo cuando están a punto de ministrarle.
Y sucedió que cuando los sacerdotes salieron del lugar santo, la nube llenó la casa del Señor y los sacerdotes no pudieron quedarse a ministrar a causa de la nube, porque la gloria del Señor llenaba la casa del Señor. (1 Reyes 8:10-11 LBLA).
Sin embargo, la afirmación más insistente de que YHVH no estará contenido ni siquiera en una casa construida para él y con su consentimiento surge en un detalle prescriptivo de la larga oración dedicatoria de Salomón. En todos los casos de necesidad futura que Salomón prevé, Israel e incluso los extranjeros cuya desesperación los lleva a buscar el favor del Dios de Jacob orarán hacia este templo. Sin embargo, la súplica de Salomón es que YHVH «escuche desde el cielo, desde tu morada», y no desde esta casa que él ha construido para el Señor de Israel, siempre accesible.
Cuando la tradición bíblica aborda el tema del culto, insiste en una realidad dual más que en un simple hecho. Por un lado, a los estudiantes del texto se les enseña a anticipar que YHVH se hará verdaderamente presente en el espacio donde sus dependientes lo buscan. En el vocabulario del Nuevo Testamento, Jesús ocupará ese espacio «donde dos o tres se reúnen en su nombre». Basándose en la tradición de la presencia de YHVH en el tabernáculo y su variante más permanente del templo, el prólogo del cuarto evangelio asegura a sus lectores que…
… Y el Verbo se hizo carne, y habitó entre nosotros, y vimos su gloria, gloria como del unigénito[a] del Padre, lleno de gracia y de verdad.
Sin embargo, así como el corazón humano está predispuesto a anticipar la llegada del Señor en espacios ordinarios, se nos enseña a no esperar que él quede confinado allí o reducido a ello.
Si perdemos nuestra capacidad de notar con confianza lo que el lenguaje bíblico articula con la expresión «el Señor apareció» en tal o cual lugar, nos convertimos en deístas prácticos, habiendo perdido el contacto con el generoso acompañamiento del Dios que está aquí.
Si entretenemos la locura de que, al condescender a ocupar nuestro espacio en nuestro momento, él ha quedado bajo nuestro control, caemos perfectamente en la categoría de generaciones de idólatras.
Nuestra adoración, en efecto, lo toca. No debe apoderarse de él.
El rey Saúl de Israel fue una figura trágica o una gran decepción, o tal vez una combinación de ambas cosas. El joven David tuvo muchas oportunidades para considerar las opciones mientras Saúl proseguía con sus esfuerzos condenados al fracaso y llenos de envidia por acabar con este guerrero pastor y poeta.
Sin embargo, cuando Saúl murió, y con él su hijo Jonatán, David no escatimó esfuerzos para ensalzar el legado del difunto monarca. Es bastante fácil citar la realpolitik como única explicación de la generosidad elocuente de David. Según esta explicación, David elogió a Saúl porque le convenía ganarse el favor de los partidarios de ese rey, ahora que la muerte en combate lo había apartado de la escena.
Sin duda, los cálculos políticos formaban parte del asunto. Sin embargo, el legado que se recuerda de David se basa en parte en la conmovedora forma en que recordaba a su difunto amigo Jonatán y a su padre, medio loco.
Tuhermosura, oh Israel, ha perecido sobre tus montes. ¡Cómo han caído los valientes! No lo anunciéis en Gat, no lo proclaméis en las calles de Ascalón; para que no se regocijen las hijas de los filisteos, para que no se alegren las hijas de los incircuncisos.
Oh montes de Gilboa, no haya sobre vosotros rocío ni lluvia, ni campos de ofrendas; porque allí fue deshonrado el escudo de los valientes, el escudo de Saúl, no ungido con aceite.
De la sangre de los muertos, de la grosura de los poderosos, el arco de Jonatán no volvía atrás, y la espada de Saúl no volvía vacía.
Es difícil creer que en estas líneas no haya un dolor auténtico. David es retratado en el lienzo del historiador bíblico con pinceladas muy complejas. Sin embargo, una vez considerado todo, el coraje visceral de la generosidad de David hacia aquellos con quienes le unen lazos de sangre, un pacto o un peligro compartido debe contribuir en cierta medida a explicar por qué es difícil no sentirse conmovido por este hombre.
Saúl y Jonatán, amados y amables en su vida, y en su muerte no fueron separados; más ligeros eran que águilas, más fuertes que leones. Hijas de Israel, llorad por Saúl, que os vestía lujosamente de escarlata, que ponía adornos de oro en vuestros vestidos.
¡Cómo han caído los valientes en medio de la batalla!
De hecho, Saúl y Jonatán estaban divididos en vida. El dolor de Jonatán por la hostilidad de su padre hacia David rompió la solidaridad familiar y lo llevó a jurar lealtad a David, lo que era casi una traición hacia su padre y rey. Sin embargo, David pasa por alto convenientemente este duro hecho, ya que Saúl ha muerto y ya no puede seguir causando daño. El futuro pertenece a David. Él no lo manchará, al menos en este momento, con las despreciables verdades que han moldeado el pasado.
Al final, sin embargo, David alabará a Jonatán por un amor que nunca encontró en Saúl.
Jonatán, muerto en tus alturas. Estoy afligido por ti, Jonatán, hermano mío; tú me has sido muy estimado. Tu amor fue para mí más maravilloso que el amor de las mujeres.
¡Cómo han caído los valientes, y perecido las armas de guerra!
David podría haber aprovechado la oportunidad que le brindó el destino con mano de hierro y haberla consolidado en la punta de la lanza.
En su lugar, hay palabras. Palabras agradecidas, edificantes y apasionadas que hablan con el tono exagerado de la verdad que mejor enmarca los duros pasajes de la muerte. Habrá tiempo suficiente para ajustar cuentas, forjar alianzas tribales y adquirir las propiedades de un gobernante trágico al que la muerte ha arrebatado.
Este día pertenece al elogio fúnebre y al recuerdo de los hombres con una exageración que dice la verdad más importante, al tiempo que relaja los estrictos cálculos del arrepentimiento.
A decir verdad, recordamos más a David por estas palabras que a Saúl o Jonatán. No hay nada de malo en ello.
A reflection offered upon invitation to Mesa Global staff, 12 January 2026
I found it interesting that Paul Johnson asked me to share on this topic, since I turned 67 yesterday. Now you might ask, ‘Well what does Paul’s invitation to David have to do with a birthday?’ And Rilla will be saying to herself, ‘He always makes it about him…’
At this age, I find myself thinking constantly *beyond doing* and *towards passing on*. I find that I live scanning the horizon for next-gen folks who can carry on whatever it is that is meaningful in my own calling. I’m not saying this ‘search for disciples’ is a 24-7 thing, but it’s pretty constant.
So our Mesa Global value of ‘infusing training in all we do’ is an organizational commitmental that happens to play nicely in the sandbox alongside my personal life stage.
Now I have the privilege of leading Mesa Scholars and I understand myself as a pastor-scholar called to shepherd in the spaces of academic communities. But I really hope that my words today will be as relevant to Mesa Global colleagues who are not educators as they are to me and to others whose very calling requires training in an academic way.
Now, about that word: training.
Some of you will know that I have a long-running battle with the predominance of that word in educational settings and in our Mesa Global universe. I fear the word ‘training’ is almost too reductionistic to be redeemed. I fear that in too many minds, it boils what we’re about down to the mere tranference of skills and how-to’s. And I shudder to think that merely teaching skills—many of which will be obsolete next year or next week— would ever be considered our focus.
But I also know that I’m losing that personal battle with the word in spectacular fashion. So I’m going to use the word without whining too much about it. I’m also going to assume that we’re all aware that infusing training into everything we do goes waaaaay beyond the mere transfer of skills or—God forbid—of information. We’re talking about forming other human beings to be the best in service of God and his world as they can be.
Here is what I believe infusing training in all we do invites us to do:
Take who I am … and what I know … and the things I do … and offer them as a gift to the person beside me.
I remember the day back in college when I realized that in the New Testament the word ‘disciple’ in Greek means quite literally one who is learning … or a learner (μανθάνων). And then Jesus, in his generous dealings with us, almost immediately surrounds us with other μανθάνοντες—other people who are also learning—and asks us to disciple them.
In more recent decades, I discovered that the Old Testament and the communities formed by it also use a teaching-earning word—תלמיד—to label a disciple. He or she is a learner or one who is being taught.
At some moment in the past decade, I got over the awkwardness of imagining that I have disciples. Now I just taking having disciples—and knowing that t hey look to me for models of service that they can imitate—as a normal feature of God’s providence. In that spirit, I invite you to shed any awkwardness you might feel about having disciples as you consider what it might mean to infuse training in all that you do.
So take a deep breath and ask yourself, in the Spirit’s empowering presence:
What is there in who I am … or what I know … or the things I do … that I can offer as a gift to the person beside me?
For discussion in small groups:
Identify one facet of who you, one thing you know, or something you do that you have never seen as availble for the formation of the person beside you.
What single move would you need to make in order to infuse that thing into your day-to-day labors/rhythms?
Welcome, friends. You’re in good company and we’ve been anticipating the presence of each one of you, by name, for weeks.
There’s a pleasant note of déjà vu in the air this evening because it was in this very city some eight years ago that five of us gathered for an impromptu dinner after a late afternoon SBL session. Christopher Hays—then a Mesa Scholar—and Milton Acosta, a mutual colleague of ours at the Biblical Seminary of Colombia had just finished presenting on the Faith and Displacement project they orchestrated in the context of Colombia’s painful experience of forced displacement. We gathered for food and a friendly debrief.
And now this…
We are not here to sell you on our two organizations this evening. The fact that you’ve joined us suggests an existing interest. But we do want to read you into developments, particularly around our respective growing edges. And we’re grateful you’ve set aside time for us to do this. If you’re only here for the food and wine, that’s OK, too. Just don’t say it out loud.
I invite you to pray with me…
Father of light, Father of love, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we thank you for this evening … for this city … for these friends … and for this abundance. We pray your kindness upon those who will serve us at table this evening. Will you draw mercifully near each one, near to us as this room’s little evening company of Jesus. Amen.
We Mesa Scholars choose to do hard things in under-resourced places.
We sometimes find inspiration—though it sounds immodest to say so—from the Jesuits. In their best moments, the Company of Jesus manifests a reverence for learning and the life of the mind, on the one hand. On the other, I am fascinated by the adventurous spirit that leads the Jesuits to go almost anywhere. This fruitful juxtaposition seems worthy of imitation, even in our far humbler and small-c ‘company of Jesus’@ Mesa Scholars.
We choose to do hard things in under-resourced places.
We’re happy to play the long game as we do, drawing strength and balance from Scripture’s agricultural metaphors.
A number of us soldier along as solid profs in places with too few of them, hopefully serving as the kind of life-shaping presence and influence whose practitioners have shaped you and me in our own trajectory as students. For me that stable of dignitaries includes precious, well-weathered names like Jerry Hawthorne, Gary Pratico, and Robert Gordon. You will have your own. We support and celebrate our teachers, who day in and day out do the hard things of teaching in under-resourced places.
But at Mesa Scholars there’s more than just solid teaching.
Anthony Buck, DPhil Oxford, explores the nature of agency and its relationship to AI as we develop an Anglican Triangle strategy that positions Anthony within institutions well known and little known in Santiago, Cape Town, and Oxford.
A number of us, under the editorial vision of our colleague Milton Acosta, write a new kind of Spanish-language biblical commentary, reading each book of the Old Testament across nine volumes through the lens of comunión y bienestar—very roughly human flourishing—as portrayed in Genesis 1-2. This fresh project emerges just as a generation of Latin American evangelicals largely unformed by individualistic assumptions imported from the North take up the mantle of leadership in nuestra América.
Emmylou Grosser, on the back of her OUP-published book, chips away at the vestiges of a three-century-old understanding of biblical poetry and offers up an alternative, all while insisting, credibly, that her passion is simply to help people read the Bible better.
A decade-long collaboration with our friends at BibleMesh has produced a platform for the learning of the biblical languages in the Spanish-speaking world. The Spanish version of this enterprise, developed under the care of Mesa Scholars, significantly improves upon its English-language progenitor. Simply put, it’s better in Spanish.
Gerardo Corpeño, PhD Wheaton, who spoke to this gathering last year in San Diego, leads his students in Guatemala along paths for approaching Christology that take Latin American realities into primary consideration.
Nathan Bills, ThD Duke, deploys his insatiable institutional and andragological curiosity as a key player in the emergence of Ghana’s Heritage Christian University as a leading West African institution.
Daniel Salinas, the leading scholar of the Latin American theological movement that has recently lost epoch-defining leaders like René Padilla, Mervin Breneman, and Samuel Escobar, attends to invitations from around the world where a Latin American experience of misión integral—wholistic mission—provides mile-markers, inspiration, and cautionary tales for thinkers and leaders inAsia and Africa.
Sergio Zapata, PhD Fuller Theological Seminary, brings a rigor to his work on the knowledge of God in diverse New Testament literatures that belies the notion that biblical and theological scholarship out of the Majority World honors lesser standards of excellence than elsewhere. Watch for Sergio in a forthcoming number of New Testament Studies.
I could go on.
We are, admittedly aspirationally, a cohort of missional scholars choosing to do hard things in under-resourced places. This is our peculiar vocation within the missio Dei.
And we are growing.
Eight years ago in this city, shivering our way towards any restaurant that didn’t require reservations, we were eight souls. Today we are forty-two. We don’t measure flourishing in numerical terms, but we take some comfort when others wish to join us.
I’m old enough to have seen tragic numbers of such people, doing hard things in under-resourced areas, become overwhelmed by needs and imposed duties and cease being scholars. They drop out of the Great Conversation that is embodied in places like ETS, IBR, SBL, and AAR. There is no longer any discovery in their work, only rehearsal and repetition. At Mesa Scholars, we are determined to break those cycles of loss and of settling.
I hope that the DNA shared by Mesa Scholars and Scholar Leaders is palpable. You could trace it even by the personnel. Prior to assuming the presidency of Scholar Leaders four years ago, Christopher Hays was a Mesa Scholar. For my part, I serve on the board of Scholar Leaders. In a moment, we’ll hear from Guillermo Velilla, who is both a Mesa Scholar and a Scholar Leader. His dual identity is hardly unique.
At Mesa Scholars, we focus more exclusively on the individual scholar making her contribution to the life and mission of the Partnered Theological Community in which she’s embedded. Scholar Leaders, too, seeks to empower its scholars for a lifetime of service, then drives beyond that focus and takes on major projects of an organizational, strategic, and global scope. We’ll hear from Christopher about some of those this evening.
We do what we do separately … and we do it together. So … this quite naturally co-sponsored evening for which you have joined us.
Now just a word about my co-host, Christopher Hays. We routinely ask ourselves how such a young punk can have accomplished so much in so few years. But for some people, Christopher is not young. He’s widely regarded as the most elderly human being on the planet to routinely practice the Gen-Z Stare.
It will not have escaped the attention of this audience that in the realm of biblical scholars, there is an excessive number of Christopher Hays-es. By which I mean that there are two.
There is Christopher B. Hays and then there is Christopher M. Hays. Ours is the M. It’s actually a matter of conjecture what the ‘M’ stands for. Christopher got through the entire presidential search process as well as the ritual hazing traditions at Scholar Leaders without having given up this secret.
Now David and Cathy Capes, the primary humans behind the highly regarded Exegetically Speaking and Stone Chapel podcasts, have organized an informal betting pool this evening in an attempt to get to the bottom of this mystery. What does the M stand for? You can place your bets in public view over at the bar or, for the squeamish, sneak an envelope into Cathy’s handbag.
But I digress…
It’s my pleasure to introduce a very fine friend, Guillermo Velilla. Guillermo is a Colombian Old Testament scholar finishing his work on the Septuagint of the Book of Exodus at Oxford after preparing for doctoral work at the Biblical Seminary of Colombia and Wheaton Graduate School. Guillermo is here in Boston with his wife Sandy and his daughter Amelia, though the two Velilla ladies—one of whom is very young—are not with us this evening. Guillermo is both a Mesa Scholar and a Scholar Leader. You’ll enjoy what he brings to us this evening.
A sermon preached at Wethersfield Evangelical Free Church, Wethersfield, Connecticut, USA
17 December 2023
Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.
In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, of the division of Abijah. And he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. And they were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord. But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were advanced in years.
Luke 1.1-4 (ESV)
I have always felt different.
It’s OK, I muddle through. I’m not having a public crisis and I’m not about to reveal any un-Christmasy, awkward secrets from up here today.
But it’s true. I have always felt different.
In high school, I was the Christian kid on the basketball team, never at the parties and rarely at the dances. (That was probably a mercy for the art of dance.)
In retrospect, our Christian tradition kept me from falling into some of the life-twisting sins that mess up teenage lives. I’m grateful for that. But it also distanced me from my friends. Maybe unnecessarily.
I got good grades, but that wasn’t a thing that was valued so much in the little town where Pastor Scott and I grew up. In fact, a high grade didn’t really earn you any friends.
But I was competitive, so I didn’t like coming in second in a class. I would actually work hard to get the highest grade while making sure it wasn’t higher than it needed to be. It was a successful week when I could get the best grade of the class on the mid-term exam and not have it be more than, say, a 92. 94 gets icky. Don’t even talk to me about 97.
I was introverted and not good with girls. (Again, probably a mercy to the young women of our valley.)
But this business of feeling different wasn’t something that ended when I could finally grow a beard and pay taxes.
I still feel different. Maybe you do, too.
In terms of my vocation, my professional calling, I’m a biblical scholar. Can I share with you that for a person in my line of work, listening to sermons is an agony?
I sit there thinking, ‘Well, OK, but ….’ or ‘Wow, you sure bungled that one … ‘ or … ‘Really???’
I have nothing against pastors. I generally love them and spend the lion’s share of my life shaping new ones as biblical interpreters and human beings who I hope are worth following. I pray for Karen’s and my pastors and their wives every morning because I know something about how demanding their work is and how much they need God’s help if they’re to do it well.
In fact, if you were to ask me what I believe my primary spiritual gift to be, I’d tell you as I’ve told others: ‘I’m a pastor, and God for some reason has asked me to exercise that gifting mostly in academic communities’ … like the Biblical Seminary of Colombia where we serve in South America.
Now in recent years, God has spared me much of that sermon-listening agony. One of the reasons I love the privilege Karen and I have of belonging to our WEFC community is that we have such a high standard of preaching here. I’m constantly in awe of Scott’s careful way with a biblical text. And, I can say the very same thing about Pastor Samuel in our church in Colombia. Sammy is an excellent interpreter of the Bible and a genuine shepherd of souls. So the Lord has been gentle with my quirky calling and its complications.
But in general, listening to a sermon has for me always been somewhere between uncomfortable and painful; participating in a Bible Study is a matter of measuring my words and trying not to say the wrong thing or over-complicate a perfectly good conversation among our brothers and sisters.
Even responding to a theological question asked of me by one of my son’s college friends sitting in the back seat of my car, led to my Johnny turning around and saying to his friend with a smile on his face…
I just gotta’ warn you, my Dad always complicates everything…
You see, I’m different. And I’ve always known it.
But I’m not quite done yet with this little public confessional.
My calling has meant that I have spent most of my adult life in Latin America … doing work cross-culturally. Much as Karen and I love and are loved in our Colombian context, I will never be Colombian. I’ll never completely belong in that place that, as of this year, some of you from this church family now know. And when missionaries return to the country they came from… as some of you can attest … we never exactly fit back in. Living over there has changed us … made us different people.
And, if I can get really personal, I live here in Connecticut on my wife’s home turf. Karen is a local girl. She grew up in Hartford, Wethersfield, Cromwell. Now we live just across the river in Portland. We have this thing that happens to us in the car where we’re going somewhere and she forgets to tell me to turn right until the right turn is back there already. She figures I know where we’re going, but I don’t. I sometimes say to her in exasperation…
Karen, I’m not from here…
I love New England. Living back here is a return gift of something I renounced painfully when my family and I moved to Costa Rica as missionaries back in 1988 after four years in Massachusetts … But I love New England as an insider-outsider. I will never be a true New Englander, just as my family back in Millersburg, Pennsylvania, was never truly from there. That would take another two or three generations. And I don’t have’em!
So I am drawn to these first four verses of this third gospel, this Gospel of Luke. It’s tempting to think that Luke is just kind of clearing his throat in these early verses before getting on with the important stuff at verse 5.
But that would be a mistake. Luke has placed this little introduction here for a reason, and we ought to try to understand what that reason is. I think a close look at these verses will bring new light about the God of Christmas, the Jesus of Christmas, and even about us as we—joyfully, painfully?—celebrate Christmas together this year.
You see, Luke feels the need to justify adding a new report about Jesus. In his time, lots of them already exist.
Luke seems to want this Theophilus to understand both his motivation and his method for adding to the pile of memories and teaching about Jesus. In adding to earlier reports that have served Jesus’ followers and inquirers for a half century already, Luke feels that it’s important for Theophilus to understand why this new project is necessary and how it relates to the accumulation of testimonies and accounts about Jesus that is already a done deal … already available to him and to Theophilus.
I think what he says is important for us also. Let’s look carefully at what Luke writes at the beginning of his work:
First, Luke pays his respects to his forebears in the faith and in the chronicling of Jesus’ words and deeds. He respects them and he honors their testimony.
We see this most obviously in verse 2, where he uses two critical expressions to describe those who have gone before him in the task he himself has now set his hand to.
Let me read those first two verses
Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnessesand ministers of the word have delivered them to us…
Luke 1.1-2 (ESV)
Luke kind of tips his hat to these eyewitnesses and these ministers of the word. They’re probably two overlapping groups: The eyewitnesses over here knew what they knew because they’d seen it with their own eyeballs. It was undeniable to them. They’d lived those events in flesh and blood.
And then, over here, there are those who took those testimonies and the teaching of Jesus and served the early Jesus movement as servants of the word.
I think these would have been two overlapping groups.
Not all the eyewitnesses would have had this kind of word-based ministry as their calling. Some of them would have been quiet, everyday believers living local lives of faithful service. And not all these ministers of the word would have been eyewitnesses. Some of them would have come along later and met Jesus in something other than an eyewitness way.
But there’d be an overlap: The apostle John writes like one of the overlap people at the beginning of that little letter that we call First John:
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us— that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.
1 John 1.1-4 (ESV)
Luke is saying to Theophilus, ‘Look, I stand on the shoulders of such people. Luke himself is not an eyewitness and in his double volume (Luke-Acts) he doesn’t style himself as a typical preacher or teacher of the word either.
Luke is repaying a debt here, and I think he does it with some tenderness and affection for the people he’s describing. His faith and the faith of people he cares about wouldn’t exist without this legacy. Luke acknowledges that right at the outset, the way you and I can speak with appreciation of the people who testified of Jesus to us and nurtured us in the faith, even if our lives have long since moved on from those formative moments.
But the second thing I notice in these first verses demands some patience on our part if we’re going to understand Luke: he finds the accumulated mountain of testimony and teaching about Jesus to be … how do I say this diplomatically…inadequate.
Now, let’s pay careful attention to what he’s saying.
He doesn’t say erroneous.
He doesn’t say superficial.
He doesn’t say misleading.
He doesn’t say obsolete.
What he says is something like this: ‘Look, Theophilus, I get you. We’re a little bit alike, you and I. We have this analytical bent about us. We need sequencing. We need order. We need logic. We need to understand the wiring behind the panel and how it works, not just whether the lights go on and the refrigerator keeps things cold and the Internet works.
And this legacy of testimony and teaching about Jesus doesn’t completely meet the need for people like you … and me. Admit it. You and I, we’re different. Not better, not worse. But different.
So here’s what I’ve done.’
Verses 3-4:
…(I)t seemed good to me also, having followed all thingscloselyfor some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.
Luke 1.3-4 ESV)
There are four critical expressions in what I’ve just read that explain Luke’s method. They shed light on what he brings to a table that’s already been abundantly served, on behalf of Theophilus:
…all things (πᾶσιν)
…for some time past (ESV) / from the first (NRSV) (ἄνωθεν)
…closely (α͗κριβῶς)
…orderly (καθεξῆς)
The first three of these expressions describe Luke’s research methods. The last one describes his published work.
His research:
‘All things’: exhaustive
‘From the first’: sequentially
‘Closely’: with attention to detail
His report:
‘Orderly’: in a way that speaks to your habits of reading/consideration/reflection/persuasion.
To what end: (4) that you might have certainty ( ἵνα ἐπιγνῶς: solid confidence, deep understanding) concerning the things you have been taught. Luke’s work doesn’t replace earlier testimony and teaching. Rather, it complements it. It bolsters it. Luke’s approach is a force multiplier in the discipling of Theophilus. It makes what already exists more adequate to Theophilus’ need.
It addresses Theophilus as the person God has created and ‘wired’ him to be without suggesting that he just get by on what works for most people. You see, Luke honors Theophilus, too. He doesn’t consider him a problem to be managed or an annoyance to be tolerated. He addresses him as ‘noble Theophilus’.
Now Luke is about to launch into his own unique retelling of the Christmas story, complete with all sorts of inside scoops that could only have come from him interviewing the people involved. He’s describing his careful method in these first four verses, but he will very soon put the results on display.
His account will very obviously aim at being exhaustive, sequential, detailed and orderly.
Can you see this? Luke’s gospel is a labor of love. That love reaches back to the eyewitnesses and ministers of the word whose shoulders Luke stands upon. And that same love reaches forward to Theophilus, whom Luke longs to see experience a mature certainty or confidence in his own life as a follower of Jesus.
Now there’s an open secret about Theophilus and this is probably the moment for telling it: We don’t have a clue who Theophilus is. It’s one of those names that has a meaning. It means ‘lover of God’ or ‘friend of God’.
Maybe this name belonged to a guy Luke knew and his research is meant to serve that friend. Theophilus is a masculine name, so it would have been a man, not a woman. Or maybe it’s a name that stands in for any lover of God who belongs to that minority of us who need to understand before we can believe and who need to have our hearts and minds well nourished if we’re going to continue to believe. Maybe Theophilus is not a man who lived and died twenty centuries ago … Maybe Theophilus is the 18% of us or whatever it is whose brains work in a way that requires this kind—Doctor Luke’s kind—of information.
In either case, Luke—by the insight of God’s Spirit—has seen Theophilus … has seen us. He has understood us. He has honored us. He has spoken our language, not asked us to just get by, by listening in.
When Luke moves on to talk about the incarnation of God in Jesus—the taking on of the human condition, the taking the form of a servant—he has demonstrated that same servant attitude by taking those of us into account who are different in this way.
The birth of Jesus is good news shaped and shape-able even for those of us who are different.
Even for Theophilus …
Even for Dave …
Perhaps even for you…
Now it may have caught your eye that I have not stopped this morning with Theophilus. The text I have quoted from in Luke in gets to Theophilus by verse 4.
But then, when Luke has finished his preface and launched into his account, there is a verse 5, a verse 6, and a verse 7.
Now Luke is no longer describing his own methodology, he’s already done with that by the end of verse 4. Now he’s telling Jesus’ story.
In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, of the division of Abijah. And he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. And they were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord. But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were advanced in years.
Luke 1.5-7 (ESV)
Look where Luke goes first with his fresh account of the story of Jesus. The first chapters of the gospel of Luke are full of the stuff, the content, of personal interviews.
How do we know this?
Well, he’s scooping inside details that were only known to individuals who were alone when the thing they experienced went down. One example is Zechariah’s visitation by the angel when he was ministering alone in the temple. Zechariah happened to be there according to the priestly schedule that assigned him to temple service in the precise moment when totally unexpected stuff begins to happen. Only one of the priests went into that holy space at a time. The door was shut, the people were waiting outside, and it just seemed like Zechariah was taking forever in there (1.21).
But the angel Gabriel’s confrontation of Zechariah, his commissioning of John the Baptist’s childless father into the center of the mission of God, his being struck dumb when he asked the angel for a guarantee, that all went down between Zechariah and this angelic Man of God (Gabriel).
It seems that Luke eventually interviewed Zechariah.
And then there’s Mary’s experience with her own angelic visitation, quoted so often in the Christmas season.
Nobody was around to record those stories except the human beings who experienced them. By telling Zechariah’s story and Mary’s story, and other people’s stories, Luke is adding to our population of ‘eyewitnesses’, as he’s already called such people in verse 2. As he does so—although I have no idea whether he would have thought of it this way—Luke is becoming more and more like those ‘ministers of the word’ that he mentions alongside the eyewitnesses.
But I want to go somewhere very specific with this.
As Luke tells the Christmas story, how does he identify the first interviewees he brings into his account? Let’s look one final time at verses 5-7:
5. In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zechariah, of the division of Abijah. And he had a wife from the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth. 6. And they were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord. 7. But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were advanced in years.
Luke 1.5-7 (ESV)
I imagine that Elizabeth gave Luke permission to disclose that last … really tender … potentially shameful detail. At least I hope he did. I don’t know what the protocols for such a thing were back then. Luke doesn’t just say ‘but they had no children’ and leave it at that. He locates the problem in Elizabeth’s body. Elizabethwas barren, he says.
As a result of this situation, Zechariah and Elizabeth are—like Theophilus but in a different way—people who are different.
I want to be careful as I describe this, because in a church family like ours infertility is without doubt the painful experience of at least some of us. It’s also one of those losses … in many cases the loss of a dream, the loss of something that was longed for but never possessed … that makes people feel different than their peers, especially in that season of life when their friends seem to be happily producing babies just when they cannot. Commonly, it’s an ache that lasts an entire lifetime.
Zechariah and Elizabeth know that pain. They’re aware that they are different, ‘that old couple with no kids’. And, like Theophilus, they are not left out when God’s redeeming love, made human in the Christ child, invades. They are seen, they are taken into account, they are brought into the story. In their case—unlike what some of us are asked to endure—they are healed, made whole, and gifted with a son.
Throughout this Christmas season, we have been singing that amazing song, O Come, All You Unfaithful. We’ll sing it again in a minute.
O come, all you unfaithful Come, weak and unstable Come, know you are not alone
O come, barren and waiting ones Weary of praying, come See what your God has done
Thanks to our brother Luke, we can now add to this description of those who are invited to come closer to Jesus in this season all of us who for whatever reason ‘have always felt different’. Like Theophilus, and like those of us who kind of are Theophilus. Or for any other reason.
For all of us, it’s time for us to come home.
If ‘feeling different’ in some way describes a burden you’ve carried, wouldn’t it be just like Jesus to draw you and your story into his embrace more tightly than you’ve ever known it. Even into this hospitable family, more fully than you’ve expected.
I began this sermon by breaking one of the cardinal rules of preaching: I talked about myself. Because you’re generally a patient bunch, let me end it in a similar way and let’s call this my testimony. I have breakfast regularly with Brian Hucks, our lead elder here at WEFC.
Because he’s an engineer and I’m a biblical scholar and we’re both guys, we always eat at the same place at the same hour. I always arrive four minutes late. We even sit at the same table, and we generally order the same breakfast we ordered a month ago. It’s just a little bit pathetic, but we like it that way.
Two breakfasts ago—as Brian and I measure time—something took the conversation to a point where I told Brian that, even at our beloved church and mostly because I spend half of each year or more somewhere else, I always feel like a bit of an outsider. I never learn enough of your names. I don’t know your stories. I’m somewhere else when big stuff happens here. I told Brian that I don’t feel as though I really belong yet.
Brian looked stunned. He didn’t interrupt me, probably because he was chewing and even two guys in flannel shirts try not to talk with our mouths full.
But when I gave him a chance he said, ‘Well that is certainly not how any of us sees you’ and he affirmed Karen’s and my belonging in this family.
It was a word from God for me.
It was an invitation to come home. It was like Luke saying to Theophilus, ‘Look, pal, we’ve got a place for you in this Jesus story, let me speak your language to you for a little bit.’
Wouldn’t it just like Jesus to come near to you as you remember the events of Jesus’ birth with this limping community of Jesus-followers?
O come, all you unfaithful Come, weak and unstable Come, know you are not alone
O come, barren and waiting ones Weary of praying, come See what your God has done
Christ is born, Christ is born Christ is born for you
O come, bitter and broken Come with fears unspoken Come, taste of His perfect love
O come, guilty and hiding ones There is no need to run See what your God has done
PRAYER
Our Father, we ask you to bring us all the way into your embrace. Please reduce the distance between us and you down to the vanishing point. Please reduce the distance between each other in that same way.
La bendición hermosamente equilibrada que se pone en boca de Aarón y sus hijos hasta donde alcanza la vista genealógica es notable por varios motivos.
En primer lugar, parece -al menos a los ojos del lector occidental- un claro en el bosque de lo que a veces puede parecer un bosque literario muy oscuro. De hecho, algunos críticos literarios encuentran la bendición aarónica tan profundamente disonante con su entorno que aventuran un origen para ella que está lejos de las prescripciones cultuales y arquitectónicas de su entorno.
Es posible que haya sido el ancla brillantemente pulida de alguna liturgia perdida, colocada aquí como una joya en un entorno que parece deslucido e incluso burdo en contraste. Otra posibilidad es que haya brillado tanto que los escritores de Israel hayan redactado una explicación etiológica incoherente de su gloria estética, que tal vez no esté a la altura del núcleo con el que empezaron.
Probablemente ambos tipos de teorías juzgan con demasiada dureza el material litúrgico de los pasajes circundantes. Igualmente, ambas miran con malos ojos lo que los estudiantes de la Torah han encontrado durante innumerables generaciones más convincente que oscuro, más digno que burdo. Por último, podría decirse que ambas explicaciones son intolerantes con la flexibilidad de género de la literatura antigua que está en nuestras manos al leerla.
En cualquier caso, es plausible que el escándalo que se presenta como entorno empobrecido para una joya brillante esté en función de nuestras propias limitaciones como lectores y no de rudas deficiencias del texto.
El Señor te bendiga…
Números 6:24 (LBLA)
Los sacerdotes de Israel declararán para siempre estas palabras sobre el pueblo, esperando contra toda esperanza que el Señor realmente escuche y esté dispuesto a actuar. Si estas palabras caen al suelo como un monólogo sacerdotal optimista o, en el mejor de los casos, como un diálogo unilateral entre adoradores, entonces se perderá algo más que una vocación religiosa que no salió bien.
Un pueblo, en efecto, perecerá.
Después de todo, uno de los grandes escritores sureños de Estados Unidos se atrevió a preguntar de forma tan memorable como si estuviera vivo hoy, ‘¿Dónde están los hititas?’
The bright and promissory nature of chapter 48 begins by rehearsing the sequence of warning-and-calamity that comprise ‘the former things’ (48.3) which the prophet now considers to lie behind Jacob/Israel while the horizon brightens just ahead. I discuss that retrospective view here.
The striking pivot towards the redemptive future that awaits is initiated at verse 6 by two principal means. First, the earlier and retrospective identifier the former things (הרשאנות) at 48.3 meets its counterpart in the prospective reference to new things (חדשות) at 48.6. It is critical to observe the degree to which both expressions are ‘empty’ identifiers; that is to say, they establish a sequence but their content must be provided by additional text and context. This does in fact occur, and so establishes a base of meaning that can travel with both identifiers into new and different contexts.
Second, the adverbial expression מעתה (from this time forward) establishes a new temporal baseline for the aforementioned new things. It states that these novelties in Jacob/Israel’s experienced will be announced now and from this point forward.
You have heard; now see all this; and will you not declare it? From this time forward I make you hear new things, hidden things that you have not known.
They are created now, not long ago; before today you have never heard of them, so that you could not say, ‘I already knew them.’
You have never heard, you have never known, from of old your ear has not been opened. For I knew that you would deal very treacherously, and that from birth you were called a rebel.
Isaiah 48:6-8 (NRSV, emphasis added)
There are a number of contrasts between the former things and the promised new things, some of which are obvious while others are less so. One that is often missed pertains to the prehistory of both elements. In the case of the former things, the text describes a long prehistory of warning that anticipated the actual, sudden calamity of Zion’s destruction and the people’s exile. By contrast, the new things that are here introduced are described as unimaginable. Jacob never saw them coming, indeed could not have been trusted to steward news of them appropriately. They were hidden from both humans and their idols, as we shall see. YHWH alone knew of them. YHWH alone creates them now.
Curiously, there is no suggestion here that the prophet Isaiah had known of them either. The smelting (48.10-11) and returning remnant motifs are of course embedded deeply in the eighth-century prophet’s words. Both of these presage a kind of future beyond the storm. Yet in chapter 48 detailed foreknowledge of the new things is not claimed on the prophet’s behalf, including the role to be played by the here unnamed Cyrus, whom YHWH loves, calls, and brings to Zion’s aid (48.14-15).
There is a touch of regret in YHWH’s address, yet he seems to lament a misfortune that has in any case now passed.
Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: I am the LORD your God, who teaches you for your own good, who leads you in the way you should go.
O that you had paid attention to my commandments! Then your prosperity would have been like a river, and your success like the waves of the sea; your offspring would have been like the sand, and your descendants like its grains; their name would never be cut off or destroyed from before me.”
Isaiah 48:17-19 (NRSV)
This backward glance at the sad necessity of those former things is soon overcome by the summons to an unspecified plural audience energetically to proclaim ‘this’ to the end of the earth. Presumably ’this’ (זאת) alludes to the whole trajectory of YHWH’s engagement with Jacob/Israel, and most certainly the very recent news that YHWH ‘has redeemed his servant Jacob’—to the end of the earth. Declared as though an accomplished fact, it seems to indicate more precisely an imminent result of a decision that YHWH has taken. It is the unexpected agency of the unnamed Cyrus that renders YHWH’s new things not only sequentially new but also entirely unforeseeable.
On the strength of all this, the exiles are encouraged to…
A sermon preached at Wethersfield Evangelical Free Church, 18 July 2021
If you’re following the teaching given here over these last few weeks, you’ll know that we’re immersed in a sermon series on the ‘one another’ passages of the New Testament. There are many of them and we’re able to touch on a few.
It’s important for us to take on board that these ‘one another ‘passages—do this to or for each other—are about forming and nourishing health and unity within a community that we as followers of Jesus have committed to. For most of us, that community is Wethersfield Evangelical Free Church.
I’ve chosen to speak this morning on the instruction we receive from two apostles to ‘greet one another with a holy kiss’ or in one case ‘greet one another with a kiss of love’.
This may be the first sermon about kissing that you’ve ever heard. I assure you it’s the first one I’ve ever preached.
In fact, if you were to miss today’s sermon on kissing, it’s likely you’d have a thirty- or forty-year wait until the next one rolls around.
Here’s one of our five passages where this kissing instruction comes to us in the letters of the apostles who shaped and instructed the first Christian communities:
Finally, brothers, rejoice. Aim for restoration, comfort one another, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you. Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the saints greet you. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
2 Corinthians 13.11-14
Now the fact that you’ve probably never heard a sermon about kissing and the fact that I’ve never before preached one doesn’t mean that the apostles had little or nothing to say about kissing. On the contrary, the text I’ve just read is just one of five that are like it. Nearly word for word like it.
The Apostle Paul writes the same instruction at the end of four different letters, each one identical with the others: Greet one another with a holy kiss.
Peter also weighs in on the topic of kissing, although his expression is a little different. He says Greet one another with a kiss of love.
Each time, this summons to kissing comes near the end of a letter when the apostle is wrapping things up. Every single one of these Kiss Commands comes in the context of lots of other greetings. For example, have a listen of how absolutely social the apostle Paul is sounding as he makes his way to the end of his long letter to the Romans.
Rom. 16:3 Greet Prisca and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus, 4 who risked their necks for my life, to whom not only I give thanks but all the churches of the Gentiles give thanks as well. 5 Greet also the church in their house. Greet my beloved Epaenetus, who was the first convert to Christ in Asia. 6 Greet Mary, who has worked hard for you. 7 Greet Andronicus and Junia,3 my kinsmen and my fellow prisoners. They are well known to the apostles, and they were in Christ before me. 8 Greet Ampliatus, my beloved in the Lord. 9 Greet Urbanus, our fellow worker in Christ, and my beloved Stachys. 10 Greet Apelles, who is approved in Christ. Greet those who belong to the family of Aristobulus. 11 Greet my kinsman Herodion. Greet those in the Lord who belong to the family of Narcissus. 12 Greet those workers in the Lord, Tryphaena and Tryphosa. Greet the beloved Persis, who has worked hard in the Lord. 13 Greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord; also his mother, who has been a mother to me as well. 14 Greet Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobas, Hermas, and the brothers5 who are with them. 15Greet Philologus, Julia, Nereus and his sister, and Olympas, and all the saints who are with them. 16Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the churches of Christ greet you.
Romans 16.3-16
You get the picture, right? There is something very important for Paul in each community’s web of connections with other communities and other Christians and with Paul himself.
Whatever this Holy Kiss is about, it has something to do with being consciously connected with other Christians. This is not just about your spiritual health or mine.
We could put it another way: The order to greet each other with a Holy Kiss only makes sense if we are Jesus-People-in-Community.
So let’s start by recognizing that.
In fact, let’s stick a pin in that and give it a name. Let’s make it a first declaration this morning:
Holy Kissing is for connected people.
Here’s a second truth: Kissing is intimate.
I was really hoping I wouldn’t have to talk about this in public. It’s not a topic that’s natural to me. But I think I probably have to say one or two things about it, so here we go…
For starters … this could get awkward fast … there are a lot of ways to kiss somebody.
But every one of them is in some way intimate.
Just to declare the obvious, you can’t really kiss more than one person at a time. Faces aren’t big enough for that. So there’s already intimacy in the simple fact that kissing is a one-on-one enterprise.
But we can say more about the intimacy that’s native to kissing.
You can’t kiss from a distance.
You’re exposing your moist lips in close contact with another person’s similarly moist lips … or at least their face. Unless you’re blowing a kiss … which is really just a kind of theatrical imitation of a real kiss … you’re getting very close to the person you’re kissing. If they have a scent or a smell, it comes into your nose. It’s inevitable because you’re that close. You’re momentarily that intimate. If they’re sick, you’ll get what they have. If they sneeze at the wrong time, it’ll be all over you. Depending on the kind of kiss, you may even taste the other person as well as smell them. If they have hair, it may brush your eyes.
Do you see what I mean? Kissing is inevitably intimate, will you grant me that?
So Paul, who is distant from people he cares about, spends a lot of time sending greetings, because he’s not close enough to kiss them and sometimes he’s in prison. But when he turns to the inside of a community—whether at Corinth or Rome or Thessalonica—he says, ‘Look, you guys can get close. I don’t have that privilege. So, you guys, when you gather, greet each other with a kiss.
He’s commanding a kind of intimacy within the Christian community that he’s just spent a lot of ink instructing how to live together and how to live on mission. And he does it over and over again. Something about this practice … this social ritual … this discipline … this kiss … seems to be really important to Paul.
Holy Kissing is for connected people …
…and….
Kissing is intimate.
But it would be a terrible thing to stop here.
Think about this with me: all kinds of wild and crazy communities could applaud this instruction if what we’ve looked at so far were all Paul was saying … and in some cases they’d be very far from being Christian communities.
There’s one very important … consistently recurring … feature of Paul’s instruction that we haven’t talked about yet. Can you sense what it is?
Paul says, ‘Greet one another with a holy kiss.’
In recent weeks, I’ve worked hard to understand what Paul means by adding the adjective holy to the noun kiss. He does this in all four of his exhortations to community kissing, so it can’t be a casual or mindless move. He has something very important in mind.
Otherwise, his command would be to greet each other by kissing instead of greet one another with a holy kiss.
I believe his point in consistently calling for a holy kiss is community-building restraint.
I did say, did I not, that this kiss is not about your or my pleasure or spiritual health?
A holy kiss is intimacy within limits. There’s a time for kissing without limits, as there is a moment for intimacy without limits. Our own bodies and urges and passions, the way God created us to be, lead us in this direction. And if we need biblical guidance on this, the very sensual book called Song of Solomon makes clear that God values passionate love between a husband and a wife, even urges it, even delights in it. He created the thing, after all. He knows what he’s talking about.
But the holy kiss that communicates greeting … welcome … in a community of Jesus followers enacts intimacy within limits.
It welcomes. It is a way of ‘seeing’ the person who arrives at the door of the community or of the community’s gathering. It makes eye contact and then it makes lip contact or at least cheek contact (the ‘Air Kiss’) or at least feigned cheek contact (the ‘Air Kiss Plus’).
I remember the awkward thrill when I moved to Costa Rica with a young family in 1988 and learned that in that culture a man always greets a woman with a kiss. But I was instructed that you don’t actually let your lips touch a woman’s cheek unless you know her very well or are family with her.
Instead, you touch cheeks and you kiss the air, like this.
Then—a little later I learned the shades and nuances of this kind of kissed greeting. I learned to do what I’m going to demonstrate here. In fact, I became quite an expert at it … I fancied myself the Rocky Balboa of the Air Kiss Plus.
[Demonstrate the Air Kiss +]
Do you see what I did there? I didn’t actually touch the woman’s cheek, nor did my hand actually touch her shoulder. Both of those things almost happened, but they didn’t really happen. It is the Goldilocks Moment in Costa Rican kissed greetings. And, among expats in Costa Rica, I considered myself a bit of a rock star for getting it just right.
I was an absolutely amazing Almost Kisser.
The woman felt properly greeted. I felt like the world’s best holy kisser. And no boundaries had been crossed.
It was awesome.
This is not too far, I think, from what Paul means when he insists that in the communities that look to him for apostolic leadership, we greet each other with a holy kiss. I think Peter’s community, which is instructed to greet each other with a kiss of love, would have been practicing the same community-building intimacy with restraint.
Can you begin to imagine how this works?
When we come together as God’s New Israel, as his little flock, as Jesus’ community, we don’t just let people find their way in and take a seat, literally or figuratively. We notice them. We see them. In Paul’s and Peter’s day, we kiss them.
The holy kiss notices … offers intimacy … with the kind of restraint that builds community.
The intimacy is important. The restraint is important. And, together, both create and construct a community where Jesus is Lord and people are at home.
Let’s work towards some concrete take-aways:
As a dude, I wouldn’t welcome a new couple into my Community Group, discover that Mr. Smith works at Pratt and Mrs. Smith is a stay-at-home wife and mother, and then invite Mrs. Smith to go whale watching while Mr. Smith is at work. It wouldn’t be appropriate, mainly because it wouldn’t build community. It might be intimate. But it would be divisive. It would be weird. It wouldn’t be holy in the way that a holy kiss is holy. It would be intimacy without the community-nourishing limits.
A holy kiss nourishes intimacy and builds community. It is both one-on-one and broadly social. It is both intimate and public (observable).
Let me take a little bit of a detour:
I’ve noticed over the years that guys, in particular, begin to do two things when they come into Christian faith and Christian community. They begin to sing. And they start to hug.
Both would have been awkward and alien for most guys before Jesus became their Lord. Both are a little bit out there. A little bit alien. Yet Christian guys begin to do both.
I think this is very close to what Paul is getting at with his instructions about greeting with a holy kiss. We are invited to get out there a little and sing … and hug. But we do so in ways that are public and restrained because we’re building community.
We hardly need to be asked to do this. We just do it. It’s natural. It’s good. It’s holy.
So … how come we don’t kiss each other today?
I don’t think it’s because we don’t see each other, although in a Western, individualistic culture, we must always be aware of that tendency. By default, we do make all things about my or your individual convenience or pleasure or spiritual health.
So why don’t we kiss?
Well, most of us are products of a culture that is not overly tactile … touch-oriented. We place a very high value on independence … on personal space.
Somehow, perhaps also in part because we live in an overly sexualized environment, we’ve decided (without really consciously deciding) that a kiss would not build community. It would be weird.
There’s some value in pausing to think about this. Contrary to what some Christians claim, we don’t just read our Bibles literally and go do what the Bible says. People who imagine that this kind of literal reading and implementation of what we’ve read is Christian obedience have not yet thought hard enough. We’re far more selective than that. We pass everything we find in the Bible through a couple of prisms before we act. And we should. We must.
One of those prisms is culture. Culture doesn’t get the final word, but it gets a word. I’m not sure God is concerned that we begin right now to flaunt our cultural norms and begin kissing each other as we gather together.
But if we’re not going to start kissing each other as our standard greeting, how do we submit obediently to this apostolic instruction?
Here are some practical ways in which I think we practice this odd apostolic instruction.
We greet intentionally and verbally.
We touch.
We make unhurried eye contact.
We learn each other’s names and we use them.
We shake hands. (There’s more than one way to do this. Personally, I love the firm handshake with the forearm twist … or the shoulder-squeeze twist.)
We hug.
We ask questions and listen for the answer.
That is to say, we construct Christian community by practicing both intimacy and restraint.
What we do not do … what we must stop doing if it’s become our habit … is to wander in and out with our eyes down, our hands in our pockets, and our hearts playing defense.
We must not do that.
There is room for introverts and extroverts in this practice of Christian greeting. There is space both for the Natural Hugger and the Reserved. But there is no room for untended fear or enmity or distance.
We must open up. We must, figuratively if not literally, learn to kiss one another … in holiness and with all due restraint but also with an openness to the crazy-good new things that happen when we begin to pay attention … to make eye contact … to embrace the other … to become family … to get outside ourselves and care more for the interests of the other than for our own.
When we do this, we’re not merely being nice. We are practicing the same hospitality with which Jesus welcomes us into his company. Into his embrace.
So, if I may: Brothers and sisters … sons and daughters of the living God … servants of our Lord Jesus Christ … spiritual family … Greet one another. Greet one another with a kiss. Greet one another with a holy kiss.
Thus ends the first sermon on kissing that you have likely ever heard.
May our Lord make us family.
Benediction
2 Corinthians 13:14 The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
Questions for Community Groups
How do you express appropriate intimacy when you greet someone in our Christian community?
In the light of the instruction to greet one another with a holy kiss, how do we currently err on the side of being too reserved?
Are you aware of any practices in our community or in another where we err on the side of unrestrainedintimacy in greeting or welcoming?
What kind of welcome in our cultural context would communicate that ‘this is a place where Jesus is Lord and you are at home’?
Canter Bridge 